Very little is more important than school, but this algebra test means nothing next to the sight of her body against a starry background.

She’s been aware for years that her body is wrong, skin and meat and juices and Incorrectness, but none of the makeup ads and style magazines had understood the reason why or what she wanted to do about it. The dream state almost gets it.

So many options, so much freedom, but the first thing to do is obvious. She has to get rid of her skin. Pores and hair and sweat glands melt away, replaced by blue metal scales as shiny as a just-washed car. And as the metal spreads, power accumulates.

She'll be back out of pajamas soon enough. Breakfast is a bowl of oatmeal and a banana and No Coffee even though it really couldn't matter less if she stunts her growth now, and then she'll take a jog around the neighborhood. Flying is great, but she shouldn't let her legs atrophy either.

And while she's doing that, she notices that what she's feeling is more than the combination of swarm-sense and ordinary trepidation. She *knows* the bugs are a threat to her the way she knows that water is wet and fire is hot.

It is at this point she realizes she has made a tactical error by landing in the parking garage. There's not enough room to take off in here. If she wants to get out of this building, she has to either get past the bugs, get all the way to the roof, or jump out the side and hope really hard that her wings catch air before she eats asphalt. And she knows that last thing isn't happening.

"Ninth and Commerce parking garage," repeats the voice, "all right, I'll send a swarm response team. You may be able to outrun the bugs, or get into an elevator they can't enter before the team gets there."

Feeling the swarm flying and hopping behind her is weird. Her swarm-sense seems to be seeing double, with one set of bugs lagging a few seconds before the other. She gets around the corner and into the next level, the bugs gaining precious meters from going over and under cars she has to go around.

Of course it doesn't. But she can't stay ahead of the swarm for much longer; she'll make a stand here with a wall at her back and hope.

There's a moment of almost relief when she turns around and sees that the further-back instance of her "double-vision" is the true one. But a skittering nasty about to leap at her face isn't much better than one that already is. Now seems like a good time to put those claws back on.